Talk:History of French
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[edit] Unsectioned discussion
- Unless I missed it in my searching, I don't believe Wikipedia has lists of French etymology like English and Spanish have (see Lists of etymologies#English word origins and Lists of etymologies#Spanish word origins). Is anyone up for this? I would probably do it myself if I could find a good source written in English which would be fairly comprehensive (my French reading ability is next to nil). Does anyone know of such a source? Is anyone willing to tackle this? I think it would be a helpful resource for some people.--Hraefen Talk 20:58, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
- Given that something like 60% of English can be traced back to a Norman/French origin, I'm not sure what this list would look like. Would it only feature post-medieval French borrow words? --NYArtsnWords 22:47, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
- You may have misunderstood what I'm suggesting. I'm not suggesting a list of English words of French origin (see List of English words of French origin for that), but multiple lists of Frecnh words from various sources. So just as there are Spanish etymological pages devoted to African, Americas etc, what I'm suggesting is that we make African, Americas etc. Is anyone interested? I see that Arabic already does exist, but I don't see any others.--Hraefen Talk 23:02, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Influence of Gaulism
I am no specialist at all on this question, but some affirmations on the list of phonological changes supposedly attributed to the Gaulish influence appear to me highly dubious. For example,I've been told that the fronting from [u] to [y], attributed here to Gaulism, was rather a modification that resulted by the influence of the Franks misprononciation, and this fact explains why it is not present in Spanish or Italian. Moreover, the Old French page indicates that this fronting happened essentially in Medieval time, well after Gauls adopted Vulgar Latin. It is as though the contributor that attributed the fronting to [y] to the Gauls concluded this simply on the fact that Gauls had the [y] prononciation, but it could well be possible that the sound [y] was lost in France, but was later re-introduced.
This is one example, but many of the items in this list appear dubious as well, in part because they are not present in Spanish, which also resulting of a Celtic-speaking people switching to Latin. On the Spanish language page, only (1) the frication and deletion of voiced intervocalic consonants (g, d, b) and (2) the palatalization of jod [j] to [dj] to [ž]; ego > je are mentionned as changes in vulgar Latin influenced by the Celtic-speaking origin of the Spaniard. Moreover, on the Old French page, there is also a section called From Vulgar Latin to Old French, which summarize the linguistic changes that happened, and this list does not necessarily corresponds well to the one summarized here.
It would be cool if someone could make Wikipedia more coherent on this specific issue. Marcus wilby73 21:48, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
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- Well, I have waiting for a full week, and I don't have any response, so I am making some changes myself, based on the few notions that I know. It makes no sense to leave this page contradict the Old French page. Don't hesitate to make corrections.Marcus wilby73 22:45, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Copyvio
The 'Modern french' section is stolen almost entirely from http://www.french-language-guide.com/french/history.asp 81.158.238.224 20:28, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
- Actually, it is that site which has taken its material from the Wikipedia article. - NYArtsnWords (talk) 16:57, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
